How Progressive Gnosticism Leads to Liberal Fascism

_{Barry Arrington

August 11, 2016

Intelligent Design}

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Peter M. Burfeind writes:

According to the various social theories—all claiming to be scientific—it is an ironclad law that to be human is to have all your thought and thinking inescapably determined by whatever structures you’re born in. A Cretan can’t stop being a Cretan any more than an apple can stop being pulled to the earth by gravity. At least that’s the pretense of the sociologist (who fantasizes he’s doing science, but that’s another story.) The only escape exists in something transcending the physical nature of the subject, something outside its earthy, physical nature. Thus, if you wished to escape your human-ness, you’d have to be supra- or trans-human.

This was the exact position of the Gnostics. A Gnostic believes our flesh imprisons us in various fleshly designations—our place in space and time; our sex; our family and culture; our race and country, the language we grow up with. An elite few, however, are able to escape the tyranny of flesh and its various institutions and systems. They are able to see things purely, free of the various constructs established by life in a physical world.

This sets up, in effect, a radically binary world. Where the non-Gnostic (traditionalist) understanding of human thought invites a host of thinkers to discuss and strive for objective truth—yielding a form of federalism that when working best begets humility, tolerance, and curiosity as each deals with other seekers of the truth (i.e., what a university education used to be)—the Gnostic says all these posers are blinded by social forces they don’t perceive or understand. They’re all just on power quests, one blind thinker imprisoned by social forces leading another, all living the delusion they are pursuing the truth.

But he, the Gnostic, is not blind. Coupled with evolutionary thinking, the Gnostic is one who has “progressed” to the next age, who is on the right side of History, who is on the verge of trans-humanism, and who is charged with shepherding us benighted folk into the bright future. The program can’t be federal—a bunch of blind idiots leading other blind idiots in random circles. It must be universal, the enlightened leading the benighted out of systemic darkness into systemic light.

This is, needless to say, terrifying, because it dabbles in the idea that those not properly advanced in their thinking are of a lesser species, stifling the progress of the earth. And we’ve seen where that idea has led before. Sieg Heil!

Comments

jdk @ 9. They have, so I guess you are surprised.Barry Arrington_{August 11, 2016
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Additional comment to Barry at 5: I would be surprised that anyone has preached Burfield's strong position in these very pages, also.jdk_{August 11, 2016
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Hi Andrew. That would be an interesting question to respond to in the proper venue, particularly if it was done more in the interest of genuinely wanting to understand someone who made that transition rather than arguing against all my conclusions and observations. (I'm not saying you would do that, but some here would.) But that would be way too off-topic for this thread, I think. I appreciate your interest: maybe the opportunity will arise sometime.jdk_{August 11, 2016
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through reading and thinking I came to abandon all that
jdk, Care to share anything specific about what you read or thought that caused this abandonment? Genuinely wondering. Andrewasauber_{August 11, 2016
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I doubt that very many social scientists would agree with Burfiend's statement that I quoted.jdk_{August 11, 2016
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jdk, Of course the theory is wrong. You will get no argument from us. You are missing the point. The point is that many people believe this nonsense. Indeed, many materialists have preached it in these very pages. The point of the post is that believing this error can have serious consequences.Barry Arrington_{August 11, 2016
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I'm sure many theists would agree with what I said above. This issue has nothing to do with theism/atheism.jdk_{August 11, 2016
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JDK, I suspect the issue is more or less:
First, timeline. Darwin is 1858 - 9 (with roots in the 1830's), and later, notoriously (but without properly reckoning with the full self-referential import) highlighted how:
"With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy."
Practical modern digital computing came in in the 1930's and 40's, with Babbage's first proposals on calculating engines being c 1824. (A measure of his work is that when an analytical engine was built to his plans and using C19 precision, in the 1990's, it worked perfectly.) Across C19 and well into C20, mechanical analogue computers did amazing work. Electrical and electronic analogue computers came later; with today's operational amplifier chip as legacy. In the 1930's Turing's universal machine model was established. (Cf. some further thoughts on brains, consciousness and computers here.) Finally, Haldane's well-known stricture on materialism and mind dates to 1927:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
This specific insight was built upon by both C S Lewis and Victor Reppert. In short, immediately, the Darwinist IOU on mindedness has been on the table for 80+ - 150+ years and so has lost a lot of its credibility. Pleas for more and more time begin to sound hollow after that much time. However that is not the core challenge. Haldane rightly and aptly spoke to the powers and limitations of computing substrates, in ways that are independent of digital, analogue, neural network etc architecture: . . . They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically, so also hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In short, computing substrates do not work by rational insight and responsible freedom. They are NOT rational, which undermines any evolutionary materialistic worldview as inevitably self-referentially incoherent. For, 1 --> computing substrates are mechanical, organised, implicitly or explicitly programmed cause-effect chained devices; that, 2 --> are working from blindly mechanical cause-effect chains and some influence or involvement of equally blind stochastic chance. So, _________________________ 3 --> they do not understand per logical ground-consequent inference or inductive connexion or abductive explanatory inference. In short, we see blind, mechanical and/or chance cascades leading to results driven and controlled by GIGO. That is why this is the heart of Reppert's argument:
It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [[But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [[so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.
No, it is not undue lack of confidence in yellowed intellectual IOU's; in the end it is that there is an undeniable categorical difference between blindly mechanical computational substrates and the responsible, rational freedom required to engage in reasoned discussion. So, properly, we point to the self-referential character and the indicators at the self-refutation end of the scale. Unless evolutionary materialism can cogently answer this, it cannot even properly sit at the discussion table as of right. By contrast, a far more promising approach first reckons with the fact of responsible, reasoned, credibly free discourse and discussion. Then it asks, how can this key self-referential fact be accounted for. To which one key step is the Smith model of a cybernetic loop with a two-tier controller. The lower i/o tier can comfortably fit with the mechanical paradigm. The upper one interacts with this and with the store facility provided by the lower tier. Informationally, and by way of perhaps quantum influences that in effect shape how the in the loop i/o controller behaves. In short, we are not locked up to the brain and cns alone.
KFkairosfocus_{August 11, 2016
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Burfiend writes,
According to the various social theories—all claiming to be scientific—it is an ironclad law that to be human is to have all your thought and thinking inescapably determined by whatever structures you’re born in."
This is extremely, and inaccurately, black-and-white: there is no "ironclad law" that humans are "inescapably determined by whatever structures you’re born in". Yes, we absorb various aspects of our culture as children. However, as we grow up our experiences broaden, both actually and vicariously through reading, and we mature in our ability to step back, so to speak, from our surface and examine our beliefs. I am a Western middle-class American, and as such there are ways of being that are so deeply embedded that I don't see them, like water to a fish. However, I have also broadened my perspectives tremendously over the years, and am fairly unattached to many of the cultural prescriptions that I grew up with. In fact one of the spiritual goals of many is to learn to be able to see yourself from behind yourself, so to speak, and to moderate your more culturally and psychologically-based reactions and beliefs. For instance, I, like many of you, was born into a traditional Christian family, in a conservative mid-west town. Through reading and thinking I came to abandon all that, obviously disproving Burfiend's thesis by counter-example. :-)jdk_{August 11, 2016
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If you want to know what permanent progressive rule will be like in North America, check this out. At the time, I was so shocked by the violence of the encounter that I only realized eight days later that I was myself a witness to what I knew was true. That was why I couldn’t agree to say it was false on any account. Progressivism, as described above, is about narrative, spin, and talking points, not about truth, fact, or evidence. We will all face this soon. It will not be pretty.News_{August 11, 2016
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